Two by Howie Good

How to Prepare for Heartbreak

Summoning up
a kind of rage,
stubbornly walk,
or even crawl,
across a frozen sea
and then pass
through a hole in a fence,
on the other side
of which it’s dusk,
and maybe always is,
no people anywhere,
just stubble fields
and a black dog
with a red tongue.

***

Man vs. Bullet

I got woken up this morning by the bang-bang-bang of hammering. Debt collectors were nailing my neighbor to the floor. He won’t leave his apartment for a while now, not even for 10 minutes to go to the store for cigarettes and lotto tickets. Face it. We’re living in an unusual world. Just the other night a buddy of mine went for a joyride in a U-Haul, a kind of happy wheelchair. The sea was moving, too, like a silver car in a rollover. When I heard about it, I thought, “Well, that’s typical post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms right there.”

&

I’ve been seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Two days ago it was a bankrupt walking slowly over a bridge, searching for a place to jump. Yesterday it was a tattooed man drinking from a brown paper bag. Today it’s someone’s neck, someone else’s head, another someone else’s leg. Gulls circle over the mound of bodies, crying, “What?! What?!” My doppelganger gives me a look of intense concern. “Don’t worry about me,” I say. “I won’t end up like these people. I race dirt bikes. I do jujitsu. I take a shower every day.”

&

At first I thought it was a dead cow. Then it turned around and looked at me, and I said, “Tiffany, it’s a bear!” Just because we made it this far doesn’t mean we’re safe. That’s why I need to consult those people who survived by eating weeds and even talk proudly about it. There’s blue out there. It shows when there’s some disaster – like when a man naked from the waist down walks into a Waffle House at three in the morning and starts shooting.

***

Howie Good is the author of The Loser’s Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from ThoughtCrime Press. His latest collections are I’m Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submissions Press.